🍃Reciprocity: the interview

6 questions for Katharine Beckett Winship

Nature writer, n. A person who delights in paying attention, being astonished, and telling about it.¹

“Nature needs writers; she needs us to tell stories about the kinship between plants, people, and all species.” ~ Katharine Beckett Winship

painting by Katharine Beckett Winship

My inbox is full of treasure in the form of lovingly observed writing about place, encounters both wild and gentle, imaginative kinship and renewed reciprocity. These thoughtful, talented writers kindled in me the desire to learn more about them. So I invited them to answer six questions, which I’m delighted to share with you in this new feature. While I’m on travel, these will be a weekly feature. After that they’ll appear on the first Thursday of the month.²

Today’s guest is Katharine Beckett Winship, who writes the Matters of Kinship newsletter. Katharine is a writer, researcher, and movement teacher. Living in the mountains of Western North Carolina, she is immersed in the natural world through lived experience. She often returns to the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Suzanne Simard, Barry Lopez, Kristin Ohlson, Wendy Johnson, Robert Macfarlane, and Hope Jahren.

Matters of Kinship explores our ecosystem of plants, animals, and humans. Katharine slows us down to consider essential relationships between species. We mindfully converse about what a good future would look like for a repaired and habitable Earth.

I’m delighted to recommend Katharine’s well-informed and accessible writing on any topic, especially water.

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Why are you drawn to nature writing?

I love to write.

I love beauty.

I love greens in all of her shades.

Nature asks us to understand her. She works in quiet but mostly obvious ways. Nature needs writers; she needs us to tell stories about the kinship between plants, people, and all species.

Science shows that we tread too heavily on Earth. But science writing is difficult to interpret. Writers such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Robert Macfarlane, Hope Jahren, and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson have built bridges to easier comprehension of science reports and graphs. Talking with friends, I realized that not everyone has the inclination to absorb their work. So my mission became: How can I translate this necessary information into story?

That’s where the work of Janisse Ray, Field Guide to the Anthropocene , you and many more Substack authors help further translate nature’s news. I am with you. The more we translate, the easier it will be for humans to understand that the leaves above our heads are gifting oxygen and storing carbon.

How does nature writing affect your work life or personal life?

Work

My work life is twofold. I teach movement to help people feel at home in their bodies, which pays the bills. I write Matters of Kinship because I feel the urgency of helping people understand how nature works.

Nature fuels both.

Joseph Pilates, George Balanchine, and most of the masters have said — let animals teach you how to move. For instance, when I observe my dogs, I am reminded to stretch before I move into action.

In the technical realm, our bodies run on DNA messengers called ligands, and they match up to receptor sites on our cells. Ligands give our 30 trillion or so cells functional instructions like it’s time to duplicate. In a way, humans are ligands to Earth because we have extracted resources and deposited waste to the extent that we have shifted patterns of nature. When we tend Earth and her elements and creatures, we cooperate, reciprocate, and collaborate with nature.

In my personal life:

Sometimes, my heart aches from the really good writing about the really horrific situations going on in nature. I self-ration gas and just about everything I consume. Except books. Right now, I’m reading The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Amy Tan began her nature journal in 2016 when she was upset by the American election and situations elsewhere in the world. She took her first drawing lesson at 64, and she put in what she calls the ‘pencil miles.’ Her book is exquisite. We knew she could write, but good grief, can Amy Tan draw! When she started she could identify three birds, now she’s up to 66. I love how Amy teaches by example. I started drawing to understand nature. The practice is both peaceful and exhilarating. Anyone can start. Just take a pencil and a notebook outside. Kateri Ewing is my patient art teacher. She writes epic art books and a lovely Substack column.

On Substack, Janisse Ray teaches The Trackless Wild. She advises us to keep a nature journal from one spot. Every Thursday, Janisse shows up with small essays, prompts, and nature reports. Trackless Wild with Janisse Ray is such a great way to encourage people to fall in love with nature.

While outside, did you ever feel small, lost, or in danger?

When I was young, things were different — we could be outside on our own. Once, when I was 17, I was swimming by myself in the waters off Cape Cod and was caught up in a riptide. (Of course, I grew up hearing, ‘Never swim alone.’) I come from a family of athletic string beans, but nothing prepared me for how the water took me under. The tide felt like a monster of gravity and then no gravity at all, and then too much all over again. Maybe instinct took over when I couldn’t swim against the power of the tide? Suddenly, the water receded, and I was on my feet again.

What’s a favorite memory of nature from your childhood?

I was skiing in Vermont on a slope with no crowds and plenty of snow. Skiing felt like flying to me. About one third of the way down, I decided to take a trail, and I went so deep into the woods that I caught the scent of what I can only describe as deep nature. I stopped. At first it seemed there was an absence of sound but it was just an absence of machine noise, the chair lift and the rope tows. Then my brain recalibrated and I heard all the sounds: a bird hopping on the surface of the snow, the pine needles moving in the breeze, and everything seemed to be the way it was supposed to be. I live for those moments.

What do you hope for, for your writing?

I have three wishes.

1. That Substack proves to be a viable publishing space as it grows.

2. That nature writers make a difference in this fragile world.

3. That my writing practice gets better and better as I serve readers.

A writer or other creative artist who makes you hopeful for humanity and Earth.

Gosh, there are so many!! First let me thank my elders: Wendy Johnson and Robin Wall Kimmerer.

The two who make me most hopeful today are Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K Wilkinson. They are the co-editors of the marvelous anthology called All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis.

Ayana and Katharine wrote the beginning essay. They wrote that the “same patriarchal power structure that oppressed girls, women, and nonbinary people (and constricts and contorts boys and men) also wreaks havoc on the natural world.”

They pointed out that climate feminism dates back to 1856. Eunice Newton Foote was the first scientist to prove that carbon dioxide heats up faster and holds heat longer than regular air. (Thus, fossil fuels might have harmful effects on the planet!) Eunice Newton Foote was also a suffragette. She signed the 1848 Seneca Falls “Declaration of Sentiments”, a manifesto created during the first women’s rights convention in the United States. Her signature appears below suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Katharine Wilkinson leads All We Can Save as an ongoing educational project. You can find her outstanding resources on the website. My friend Dr. Mallory McDuff just returned from an All We Can Save workshop in Georgia. Here’s what she said about Katharine:

"I've admired and written about Katharine for years, since I first heard her give a version of her TED talk to a packed audience in Asheville, NC. The group included high schoolers with the Outdoor Academy, a residential semester-based program, which Katharine attended when she was a teen. As a writer, speaker, and facilitator, Katharine brings her full self to any endeavor--her keen intellect, her poise and grace, her emotions, and her belief that 'all we can save' is worth fighting for--not in a line of battle, but rather in a circle of caring for each other and the places we love." 

Ayana’s new book, What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Solutions, is due in July 2024. Her recent interview with David Marchese of The New York Times³

“‘I’m not an optimist. I see the data. I see what’s coming. But I also see the full range of possible futures.’ Johnson's message echoes that of Robin Wall Kimmerer: we are one of many species, and our practice is to be kin.”⁴

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What did you enjoy most about this interview? To learn about more Substack nature writers, please consider becoming a free or upgrading to paid subscriber. From now until the Autumnal Equinox, I’ll be donating 30% of paid subscriptions to Indigenous Environmental Network, which I was happy to hear about from

Maia Duerr

. Through a variety of alliances, they’ve been promoting environmental and economic justice issues for over twenty years.

If you enjoyed this post, a lovely ❤️ keeps me going. Another way to show love is to share this post with others by restacking it on Notes, via the Substack app. Thanks!

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For more inspired nature writing and artwork from the best of Substack, check out the articles in NatureStack journal.

1. thanks, Mary Oliver

2. Since I received so many inspiring responses to my initial call, both August and September will feature two interviews.

3. Ed. note: Gift link to the New York Times interview is here.

4. Ed. note: Katharine Beckett Winship’s post, “The Extraordinary Ayana Elizabeth Johnson,” is on Matters of Kinship, here.